_Tribal fetiches._--Buffalo heads also are fetiches. In one of their villages they preserved the neck bones of the buffalo, as do the Crow or Absaroka, and this is done with a view to prevent the buffalo herds from removing to too great a distance from them. At times they perform the following ceremony with these bones: They take a potsherd with live coals, throw sweet-smelling grass upon it, and fumigate the bones with the smoke. There are certain trees and stones which are fetiches, as among the Mandan. At such places they offer red cloth, red paint, and other articles to the superhuman powers.[261] (See § 334.) In the principal Hidatsa village, when Maximilian visited it, was a long pole set up, on which was a figure of a woman, doubtless representing the Grandmother, who first gave them kettles. A bundle of brushwood was hung on the pole, to which were attached the leathern dress and leggins of a woman. The head of the figure was made of _Artemisia_, and on it was a cap of feathers.[262] § 349. _Personal fetiches._--Matthews uses the term amulet instead of personal fetich, in speaking of the Hidatsa: Every man in this tribe, as in all neighboring tribes, has his personal medicine, which is usually some animal. On all war parties, and often on hunts and other excursions, he carries the head, claws, stuffed skin, or other representative of his medicine with him, and seems to regard it in much the same light that Europeans in former days regarded--and in some cases still regard--protective charms. To insure the fleetness of some promising young colt, they tie to the colt’s neck a small piece of deer or antelope horn. The rodent teeth of the beaver are regarded as potent charms, and are worn by little girls on their necks to make them industrious.[263] The “Medicine Rock” of the Mandan and Hidatsa has been described in § 329. § 350. _Oracles._--Matthews speaks of another oracle, to which the Hidatsa now often refer, the Makadistati, or house of infants, a cavern near Knife River, which they supposed extended far into the earth, but whose entrance was only a span wide. It was resorted to by the childless husband or the barren wife. There are those among them who imagine that in some way or other their children come from the Makadistati; and marks of contusion on an infant, arising from tight swaddling or other causes, are gravely attributed to kicks received from his former comrades when he was ejected from his subterranean home.[264] § 351. James says: